Along with the wide application of smart phones and the rapid development of mobile Internet services, a great impact or influence has been brought on a wireless network. A mobile phone QQ service, as a typical mobile Internet service, is growing rapidly, and according to official statistics, the mobile phone QQ has currently 200 million registered users, including 100 million active users and 20 million users being online at the same time. For the QQ service, there are many control messages, a user equipment (UE) status is updated frequently, a single data packet is of a small data volume, and UE interacts with a base station frequently. In the mobile Internet services, the UE will create or release resources frequently, and the data volume to be transmitted for each resource connection is very small, resulting in a severe influence on air interfaces. Hence, it is required to study and optimize a future network with respect to service characteristics of the mobile Internet, so as to match the service characteristics more efficiently.
In this regard, Enhancements for diverse data applications (eDDA) have been introduced into the 3GPP Long Term Evolution Release 11 (LTE R11), which focuses on the enhancements of optimal designs of the mobile Internet services and the power consumption of the terminal. In the discussion of LTE R11 eDDA, the following optimization solution has been agreed.
When the UE activates the mobile Internet service, it informs the network of its discontinuous reception (DRX) configuration recommendation through Radio Resource Control (RRC) signaling or Media Access Control (MAC) signaling. The DRX configuration recommendation includes a default recommendation or a power-saving recommendation. For example, the UE reports the power-saving recommendation to the network, and then the network configures corresponding DRX parameters for the UE, so that the UE is switched from a default state to a power-saving state. DRX is adopted so as to provide a power-saving function to the UE in a RRC connection state for a long period of time. With a DRX mechanism, the UE is merely required to detect a downlink physical control channel at certain times, and at the other times it may be in a sleep state.
For the optimization of the Internet services, the RRC connection to the UE may be maintained at a network side for a long period of time, so as to prevent continuous occupation of access resources at the UE due to the frequent transmission of small data packets. Accordingly, it is required to configure the DRX mechanism with a long sleep period for the UE, so as to enable the UE to be in the power-saving state. Once the UE activates the mobile Internet services, it will report the creation of its DRX configuration to the network, and after the network configures the corresponding DRX parameters for it, the UE enters a power-saving mode.
However, this solution does not take the mobility of the UE into consideration. When the UE is switched from one base station to another, it needs to report whether or it is in the power-saving state to this base station again, resulting in not only an increase in the air-interface signaling overhead but also additional control signaling overhead due to the delayed report. In addition, it is not all the base stations and the UE that can support the eDDA optimization function. According to the existing solution, the UE may transmit the signaling indicating that it can enter the power-saving mode to the base station that does not support the eDDA optimization solution. At this time, the base station cannot identify this signaling, and meaningless air-interface signaling overhead will occur. Further, erroneous judgment may be made by the base station or the UE, thus the additional signaling overhead will occur.